The Angelus

October 28, 2018

FROM DEACON REBECCA WEINER TOMPKINS: ORDINARY TIME

We have one more month of the season after Pentecost, Ordinary Time, the green season. When it began in spring, everything seemed to have sprung from the earth—greener than ever before. I was traveling between New York City and Nashville then, dealing with death but also life: the recent passing of my mother and the marriage of my daughter and, as usual for all of us at times, the trials of friends and loved ones, of sickness, sorrow, and struggles, those details of ordinary life that don’t always feel very ordinary.

October 21, 2018

FROM BROTHER DAMIEN JOSEPH, SSF: PEACE AND ALL GOOD

The Umbrian town of Assisi is, not surprisingly, Franciscan Central. Habited Franciscans swarm about like ants, and, as they pass one another, they often say, almost automatically, “Pace e bene!” It’s like the religious equivalent of Jeep owners nodding knowingly as they pass on the road: “It’s a friar thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

October 14, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: 2019 PARISH CALENDAR

Sister Monica Clare, C.S.J.B., began work on the 2019 parish calendar in the early summer. She also gave me another set of lessons on how to use Adobe Photoshop, which meant that I can work with the templates she had prepared for each month. In the meantime, I prepared drafts of the monthly clergy calendar and the monthly calendar of all services for all of 2019. The templates and the schedules require accuracy, since many of us use the calendar to organize our everyday lives here at the parish. What continues to be challenging is thinking through why and when we are to commemorate what our Episcopal Church calls “the lesser feasts.”

October 07, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: OCTOBER BEGINS

This is an unusual issue of The Angelus as it is being completed on Monday, October 8, 2018. Pastoral work is the priority of your parish priests. And it was pastoral work and our hosting of a special conference that has caused the delay in publishing our weekly newsletter. (This issue is dated October 7, and some of the information herein, including the music discussed in Dr. Hurd's note, concerns events already past. The next issue of the newsletter, we hope, will be published on Friday, October 12, as usual).

September 30, 2018

FROM BROTHER DAMIEN JOSEPH, SSF: Blessed Francistide!

The Brothers of the Society of Saint Francis are thrilled to be joining the Saint Mary's community. We are joining you at a significant time of the year for Franciscans. The term "Francistide," is used loosely to describe the period surrounding the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. Properly, Francistide only refers to the time from the feast until the following Sunday. It is a time of important reflection and celebration for us as Franciscan brothers.

September 23, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: PATRIMONY

Over the time I have served at Saint Mary's, I have learned more than I ever imagined I would need to learn about the maintenance and conservation of our building and its furnishings. Because of the age of our building and its landmark status, more and more work will need to be done by skilled artisans under the direction of architects and engineers who have experience with buildings like ours. Fortunately, we are in a great city where people with such training and experience are to be found.

September 16, 2018

FROM FATHER SMITH: LIFELONG LEARNING

When I was growing up I sometimes heard certain folks described as "eternal students." The epithet was never meant as a compliment. I was never sure why. After all, what's wrong with curiosity or a desire to learn? These days the catch phrase, at least in some educational circles, is "lifelong learning." I like that one better. At the risk of sounding Rumsfeldian, I would argue that we don't always know what we don't know. But when we figure that out--at 25, or 35, or 85--we are sometimes still eager to fill in the gaps. We decide to do something about what we don't know. We decide to study, and there's nothing wrong with that.

September 09, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: 9/11 AND 9/14

As in the year 2001, this year September 11 is a Tuesday and September 14, Holy Cross Day, is a Friday. On Tuesday the 12:10 PM Mass will be offered as a requiem for those who were killed in the terrorist attacks that day. On Holy Cross Day, a "Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ," in addition to the Daily 12:10 Eucharist there will be a Sung Mass at 6:00 PM. (Friday abstinence is not observed on "Feasts of Our Lord Jesus Christ.") For those who are new to Saint Mary's, our "Evening Sung Masses" start at 6:00 PM and finish before 7:00 PM. There's some music, and incense is offered; but it's a Sung Mass, not a Solemn Mass-less chanting, less ceremony. And it seems right for the day.

September 02, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: THREE THINGS FROM 2010

It was Easter Day 2010 when I walked into Saint Joseph's Hall before Evensong, and parishioner Hardy Geer met me holding a few small pieces of limestone in his hands. I would soon learn that those pieces had chipped away from the façade of the church when the iron clamps that held the stones to the building had rusted and begun to degrade. We acted quickly to erect a sidewalk shed that would cover the entire façade on the Forty-sixth Street side of the church.

August 26, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: AUGUST ROUNDUP

This Sunday, August 26, will be the last Sunday when Sr. Laura Katharine, C.S.J.B., and Sr. Monica Clare, C.S.J.B., will be in residence. We had a wonderful celebration on Assumption with them and four of their sisters from the convent following the Solemn Mass. Those of us who know them will miss them greatly, but we respect the decision of their superior to close their branch house. That said, I hope very much that the sisters will be back from time to time to worship with us.

August 19, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: OMISSIONS

We are still in Year B of the three-year Eucharistic lectionary during which the gospel text appointed for Mass on Sundays is mostly taken from the Gospel of Mark. It must be said that Mark gets shortchanged a fair amount during Year B, but it could be worse. Here at Saint Mary's, we still use the lectionary found in editions of the Book of Common Prayer 1979 until sometime after 2006, when General Convention approved the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for use in our church. In the BCP lectionary,

August 12, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: ASSUMPTION 2018

The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is on Wednesday, August 15. Sung Matins will be at 8:30 AM, Noonday Office at 12:00 PM, Sung Mass at 12:10 PM, and Solemn Mass at 6:00 PM. Mr. George Bozeman, Deerfield, New Hampshire, a noted concert player and organ builder, will play a recital at 5:30 PM. The parish choir will sing the Mass ordinary. There will be a special reception following the Solemn Mass in honor of the sisters and their ministries. We expect the sisters' last night at Saint Mary's will be Thursday, August 30.

August 05, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: AIDE MEMOIRE

If memory serves, while speaking to my senior Nashotah House Seminary class, our liturgics professor, the Reverend Dr. Louis Weil, called the altar book an "aide memoire"--a memory aid for the presider while he or she presided at Mass. The appointed words of our common prayer certainly aren't an incantation, a magic spell; they are words of worship. The Eucharistic Prayer is the primary proclamation of our faith when we gather for Mass. From the fourth century forward, in the wake of Christianity's legalization and great growth in numbers, we begin to have written texts for the bishops and priests who presided at Mass. They needed them. The church was growing fast, and texts helped presiders proclaim the gospel faithfully.

July 29, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: MOVING FORWARD

I am delighted to announce that our bishop, the Right Reverend Andrew M. L. Dietsche, has given permission to the Society of Saint Francis, Province of the Americas, to establish a "house" here at Saint Mary's. I feel sure that the members and friends of the parish will want to join me in welcoming two resident friars, Brother Damien Joseph, S.S.F., and Brother Thomas, S.S.F., to Saint Mary's in September.

July 22, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: ONE BODY, ONE BREAD

In June I wrote about the first of a two-part article by the Reverend Dr. Stephen R. Shaver, a liturgical scholar and rector of the Church of the Incarnation, Santa Rosa, California. The second part, "A Eucharistic Origins Story Part II: The Body and the Blood of Christ" (Worship 92 [July 2018], 298-317) has arrived. In his conclusion Shaver writes, "We can in fact draw at least two lines from earliest Christian meals to the later Eucharist: the first is the tradition of sharing a common loaf (and sometimes cup), and the second is the tradition associating the meal with Jesus's body and blood. Neither of these two strands was universal, but both date from the beginning of the Christian movement, and both would eventually be adopted so widely as to be normative" (pages 316-17).

July 15, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: PRAYER BOOK NEWS

The good news is that the General Convention opted not to begin the process of replacing the Prayer Book. You can read the adopted resolution here. In addition to the General Convention's Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, there is now to be a "Task Force on Liturgical and Prayer Book Revision"--and the enabling

July 08, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: PRAYER BOOK REVISION

You know we may be in trouble when you click on the Episcopal News Service headline, "Committee Will Propose Comprehensive Revision of the Book of Common Prayer," and discover a picture of the committee members with this caption, "Members of the Committee to Receive the Report of Resolution A169, which is considering revision of the Book of Common Prayer, clap along while singing a hymn before the start of their morning meeting on July 5."

June 29, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: RICHARD JOSEPH LEITSCH, 1935-2018

This is the homily I preached at the Burial of the Dead for Dick Leitsch on Thursday,

June 28, 2018. —S.G.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was for over two decades a leader of part of the Orthodox Jewish community in the Commonwealth-what we Americans often call "The British Commonwealth of Nations," but it's simply "The Commonwealth." I follow his blog called Covenant and Conversation. This week his topic was "A People that Dwell Alone." He wrote about the revival of Anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere-and these are his words-"within living memory of the Holocaust." His starting point was a phrase from the fourth book of Moses, Numbers, "a people dwelling alone" (Numbers 23:9). He writes, "If people do not like you for what you are, they will not like you more for pretending to be what you are not." He summarized his reflection with these words, "In our uniqueness lies our universality. By being what only we are, we contribute to humanity what only we can give."

June 24, 2018

FROM THE RECTOR: NATIVITY OF JOHN

The Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, is a "Feast of Our Lord" that may be observed on a Sunday when June 24 is a Sunday. We did this in 2007 and in 2012. Because of how Easter Day falls and two intervening leap years, this possibility for a Sunday celebration of John's birth will not happen again until 2029.

John's birth is described by Luke in two short verses. Eight verses are needed by the evangelist to tell the story of the child being named "John." The great focus of this narrative is the song the evangelist places on the lips of John's father, Zechariah, a song we call, "The Song of Zechariah." It's also known by the first words of the Latin translation of the New Testament Greek, "Benedictus Dominus Deus," or simply the "Benedictus." These are the first words

June 17, 2018

FROM FATHER SMITH:"LISTEN, AND INCLINE THE EAR OF YOUR HEART"

Last Friday, I traveled to Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York, to attend the ordination of Brother Aidan William Owen, O.H.C., to the priesthood. The bishop of New York was the celebrant that morning. Sister Elizabeth Broyles, C.M.A., preached the sermon.

The ordination took place in the monastery chapel, a space where prayer is offered many times each day, as it has been for many years. Such sacred spaces, I often feel, are inhabited by the memory, and the power, of all that praying. At Holy Cross, it is as if the words of the Eucharist and the psalms--the heart of monastic prayer--hang there patiently in the chapel, just waiting to become audible once again.